


the infinite Aurora

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Neverwinter Nights
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: A place for me to chuck ficlets about my KC, lawful neutral cleric of Hoar Laura Farthing, and her favorite chaotic evil ranger.
Relationships: Bishop/Female Knight Captain
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One day I might go through the effort of porting them over here, but for now my [retelling of the main campaign](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4142011/1/Not-Yet-by-Lightning) and my [post-MOTB sequel fic](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8519902/1/The-Cause-that-Slew-Me) are over at fanfiction.net. I wrote them a long time ago and make no guarantees about quality, but there they are.
> 
> Anyway, this is just a place for me to put anything else I write about them. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> ***
> 
> chapter 1: [Fionavar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/pseuds/Fionavar) prompted me something from NWN2 and, when I threatened to include Bishop, she said it had to involve Duncan as well. Just a little bit of silliness.

_Somewhere in the world…  
_Laura haggles with a street vendor over some trinket she’s trying to unload from her pack. Bishop stands nearby. Then next to her. Then, hell, ‘cause he can, kind of leans until his shoulder bumps hers and for the briefest moment she looks at him, startled but, he is amused to note, vaguely pleased.  
  
(Amused because it’s better to laugh at them both than to admit he’s kind of pleased, too.)  
  
_Meanwhile, in a beat-up run-down inexplicably enormous tavern in Neverwinter…  
_Duncan immediately looks up from sweeping, which he’s only doing because Sal up and left for Crossroad Keep and Laura took Qara with her and even Sand’s gone and he could _always_ get a quick magical sweep out of the wizard in exchange for…actually, why Sand had been willing to do that, he wasn’t quite sure, and maybe he should do a check for magical bugs even though it’s been years because _you can never been too careful_.  
  
Anyway he looked up for a reason, right, what–  
  
His uncle senses are tingling.  
  
“Someone’s laying down the mack on my niece,” he says with great suspicion, which quickly transitions to great joy when he realizes that this means his niece is alive. He should tell Daeghun! Daeghun will find her.  
  
And also kill whoever’s macking on her, so. Two birds with one stone, and all that.


	2. five-sentence fic:  origins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Fionavar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/pseuds/Fionavar) again; this one's a twofer, one about Laura, the other about Tanithar, [my other KC](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5707157/1/Falling-Slowly).

Bevil is her only friend.  
  
He’s her only friend, now; and though they know each other so well for the first time she feels the impossible gulf between them, standing here, seeing the panic in his face, feeling the purpose in her own. He cannot dream of leaving and she is not called to stay and perhaps this is where their friendship ends—  
  
but he is her only friend, and so she steps, friendless, into the swamp, her mace and the silent fury in her chest her only companions.  
  
But she is not alone. Her holy symbol burns cold against her skin and as the bog swallows her whole she finds her feet on steady ground, and a voice within her says _this is the path I choose for you_ ; and she answers the call with the light, dangerous step of a ranger’s daughter with lightning in her heart.  
  


* * *

  
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.  
  
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go at _all_ , damn it. She’s supposed to be feted off with ribbons and a cheery morning sun–as cheery as the Mere ever gets, anyway—arm-in-arm with Amie, singing and casting dancing lights whenever the swamp gets too murky for their tastes, not—not—  
  
 _running away_ , past midnight, a silver shard clutched in her hand and cutting her palm, Bevil’s mystified voice pleading behind her, Daeghun’s implacable warnings and instructions making her head spin as she dives headlong into the swamp with little more than a fetching cloak to protect her from whatever lurks within. Well, it had been fetching this morning; now it’s as torn and bloodstained as the rest of her, and for _what_?   
  
She doesn’t know and she’s terrified to find out and she’s desperately, hauntingly _lonely_ ; but she dares not cast a light and so she stumbles forward blindly, scrubbing tears from her eyes and hoping the road stays firm beneath her feet.


	3. a hoarse whisper "kiss me"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another prompt fic. the first time they meet again after "the Cause that slew Me." There Be Some Violence.
> 
> my playlist came up with “bad romance” followed by “out of the woods” followed by imagine dragons’ “next to me” and that’s pretty much it, that’s the ship in a nutshell, hooray.

She’d been walking for days and so she’d taken a moment to stop walking, to sit on the side of the road and press her forehead to her knees and pray, though the answer remained the same. The throbbing in her feet remained the same, too, and the ache in her legs, no matter that she’d spent most of her life walking. She’d gotten too used to relying on magic to keep her going; at least she knew she could rely on herself, even if it meant she had to stop more often.  
  
She pressed her palms against the dusty ground, took a breath, and pushed herself to standing. She reached to push back a lock of hair that had fallen in her face, shaking her head a little in the process, and saw him, and froze.  
  
He stood in the middle of the road, arms crossed, same leathers, same bow across his back, skin a little more weathered, hair a little longer; and he wore the same half-skeptical, half-quizzical look on his face, one eyebrow raised, and his voice held the same challenge, though the greeting was new. “Hello.”  
  
“Hello,” she said slowly, her hand completing its course and falling to her side.  
  
They stared at each other. _What are you doing here? Looking for you_.  
  
What he said was, “No sidekicks?”  
  
She didn’t quite sigh, didn’t quite snort, shook her head and looked to the sky and said, “Not this time.” He waited, and she said, “I’m looking for—someone.”  
  
“And Blue didn’t want to come along?”  
  
She shook her head again, still not quite able to laugh, exhausted and small and sad and hoping he wouldn’t—mind. “I think…I think this is something I have to do alone.”  
  
“Ah,” he said. She waited, and he said, looking over his shoulder and then back to her, “So, should I…?”  
  
He was afraid, she realized; he was afraid and he was only still standing here because he trusted her anyway and the thought went straight through the tattered shreds of her lacerated heart and sewed them together again, and she said, “Oh,” and she said, “no,” and she said, “please,” and she reached out her hand.  
  
He stared at it for moment, brow furrowed; and then they stepped towards each other and he took it and then she started walking and they were walking together, holding hands, just long enough for the tightness of their grips to ease into something familiar, something comfortable; and then they let go, her hand to her sword and his to his bow, shoulders bumping as they made their way down the road together.  
  


* * *

  
“So,” he said the next morning, toying with her hair as she rested her head on his chest, “what are we looking for?”  
  
“Slavers,” she said.  
  
His fingers paused. “We’re on the outskirts of Thay.”  
  
“Technically we crossed the border last night,” she said. “Safiya got me the key to the wards over here.”  
  
“We’re looking for Red Wizards.”  
  
“Possibly,” she said, to allay the deep chagrin in his voice. “Possibly just people working for them.”  
  
She shifted in order to look at him; he was looking at the tree under which they’d camped for the night, one of the last true trees for miles, if the horizon was any indication. “What,” he said, “why—”  
  
She thought about what she could tell him, thought about all the options, all the possible outcomes, all the conversations she’d held with him in her head; and the answer was the same, and so she just said, “It’s my fault.”  
  
Now he looked at her, a hard curiosity in his eyes, and she said, “That they were taken.”  
  
“They?”  
  
“Children,” she said reluctantly, and he rolled his eyes back to the tree and she felt her patchwork heart sink in her chest. “I was not where I should have been and I made promises I should not have made and I–”  
  
She stopped because he was looking at her again, less curious, less calculating, more resigned. “This one of those obligations of yours?”  
  
She sighed, dropped her gaze, ran her fingers over the familiar scars on his chest. His arm tightened around her, drawing her closer until her head was tucked into the crook of his neck, his pulse beating against her temple. She tilted her head and pressed her lips against it, felt him shift again, shifted in response, and said against his skin, “Yes.”  
  
He didn’t answer until he’d shifted atop her, elbows propped on either side of her ears, resting his weight against her and _oh_ , she’d missed him. “Fine,” he said, trusting and afraid and willing, and she was helpless to do anything but offer herself in return. “Where do we start?”  
  


* * *

  
They’d found a clearing surrounded by stones and she had Csarkos on his knees in the dirt, her palm on his forehead, forcing his head back, exposing his neck, barely aware of Bishop pinning his legs and holding the bleeding stumps of his wrists together behind his back. The slaver’s laughing brown eyes held all her focus as she pushed harder on his forehead, her other hand coming to rest on his throat.  
  
“Where,” she hissed.  
  
“You’re entirely too desperate,” he said. “If you’d just come in as a normal bidder—”  
  
“Shut up and answer the question,” Bishop said, his voice a thread amidst the rush of blood in her ears. To be so _close_ —to lose to _this_ —  
  
“Buyer’s privilege, I’m afraid,” he said. “My dear, do you really think your little threats are of any use? I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive. I can handle—”  
  
“You’re alone,” she said, and in her mind she heard the cry that haunted her waking nightmares and worst dreams. “No one is coming to save you.”  
  
“On the contrary,” he said, “I have—”  
  
“Contracted out your soul,” she said. “You think _that_ buyer is coming to save you?”  
  
“Nonsense,” he said. “But there’s a lovely little box with my True Name on it waiting to receive me, should you decide to kill me. I’ll be back in business before you can say _hush, little ba_ —”  
  
He stopped speaking because she closed her fist around his windpipe, and even as he choked and gurgled and even as the animal panic entered his eyes he was laughing, laughing at her, and she pressed her forehead into his until his eyes were a blur before her as if she could grind his bones beneath her, pushing him to the ground and stopping his breath and he was _right_ , he was _right_ , she had nothing—nothing but her bare hands and her helpless hopeless murderous _rage_ —she cried within her heart in the place where revenge had always found its answering call, but nothing, _nothing_ —  
  
He was dead, or at least his soul had flown to its haven, and still she straddled his corpse, both hands on his lifeless throat, squeezing as if she could pop him open and discover what he—  
  
“Farthing,” said a voice, someone shaking her shoulder, but all she saw was white and all she heard was her own voice screaming and hands sticky with blood were on hers prying her fingers apart and she threw her shoulder into him to shake him off and instead he grabbed her and _pulled_ , dragging her away and her hands grasped at—at nothing, _nothing_ —  
  
“ _Laura_ ,” he said in her ear and she went weak at the knees and her vision cleared and her hands landed on his arms and she held herself up by sheer—sheer—  
  
She looked up at him and he understood and the breath left her body and he stumbled as she fell against him, his arms locked around her back as he held her and she grasped at the joints of his armor, seeking purchase, wanting nothing more than to pull him into her and tell him _everything_ —  
  
but he’d leave, he’d leave, she knew him in his bones and he’d _leave_ and she _couldn’t_ —  
  
Her nose brushed the skin of his neck as she pulled her head back, her lips landing on his stubbled jaw, the rasp a welcome relief and suddenly the helpless desperate _nothing_ roaring rage inside her turned into a hunger like she hadn’t felt since she’d literally _been_ Hunger but this—this was a hunger she could satiate—  
  
“Kiss me,” she said, her voice a raw whisper from screaming, her lips trembling even as he covered her mouth with his and she drowned in him and she was _alive_ and this was all she wanted, bloody hands in her hair even as she undid his buckles with hands drenched in death; and if no gods (and oh she was as much a heretic as Akashi ever was but _oh_ , at least she admitted it) could stem the tide of such desperately broken perfection, then she was helpless to stop it herself.  
  
He murmured her name again, gentler this time, and she heard echoes of the same helplessness—afraid and trusting and _still here_ , both of them, for as long as they could stand it, burning up in the brilliance of skin against skin and lips on lips and if a dead man lay on the ground behind them then for a glorious moment she _didn’t care_ , and neither did he.  
  
They held each other, pressed against the rock, lips parting and coming together again, her hands pressed against his cheeks, fingers curling into his skin to tug him closer, and his fingers tangled in her hair, keeping her just as close, wanting and wanted and _enough_ , at least for now.


	4. apropos of absolutely nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes you [hear a song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C_rvt0SwLE) and you just gotta write a little fluff for your faves.

When they got together they’d usually find a job to do—something to get them out, stretch their legs, kill a few things, make the lazing about in an inn for three days worth it.  
  
This job had ended up being a week’s hike through the woods out from the city, and while he was pretty sure she probably had some magic that would make it go faster, she seemed content to shoulder her pack and follow his lead. Or walk next to him, or occasionally slip ahead and unintentionally remind him of so many of the reasons he’d followed her in the first place.  
  
He didn’t allow himself to wallow in it, but she was just so _good_. He didn’t have to deal with any idiotic heroism, or stupid questions—or talking at all, a lot of the time, which was just fine. A subtle hand signal, a tilt of the head, and they’d avoid a nest of spiders; a pause, a sniff, and she’d change direction before he even nodded the way. She wasn’t as quiet as he was, obviously, but she tread softly and every now and then she’d pull out a trick to remind him that she was, after all, a ranger’s daughter, whatever else she’d turned out to be.  
  
Still, by the fourth day, keeping a steady pace, he heard her make a soft noise of delight when they came upon a small waterfall, a spring welling up and tumbling over rocks before splashing into a surprisingly deep pool on its way to becoming a creek. So he stopped alongside it, looked sideways at her, and said, “Don’t tell me you want to get _clean_.”  
  
“You smell,” was her only comment as she dropped her pack from her shoulders, though she didn’t let it land on the wet ground at the pool’s edge.  
  
He took a deep sniff, looking the other way and listening to the rustle of leaves and moss and pebbles, counting her steps, _one, two, three, backtrack, four towards the south_ , hearing when the leaves dried out, when she set the pack down. He looked back over his shoulder at her. “Everything smells.”  
  
“And it’s very important that it does in your line of work,” she said, reaching one arm to a sapling for balance as she slipped off one boot, then the other. “But not mine. Call me decadent in my old age.”  
  
He snorted, and his next inhale contained the stink of her socks, disgusting and as familiar to him as his own. He’d know those socks from across a sulfur pool. “Have you hit thirty?”  
  
She paused mid-taking off a sock, her dark eyes searching the forest canopy. Then she shrugged and shook her head, the curve of a giggling smile on her lips, and he shook his head.  
  
“This going to take long?” he asked as she took her chain shirt off and draped it across her pack and her boots, followed by the leather chaps she wore in place of the chain greaves, leaving her in a quilted tunic and light trousers.  
  
“Depends,” she said, and then she straightened and closed her eyes and he heard the barest whisper of the leaves as she curled her toes into the dirt. The sunlight rippled across her face and her hair, shifting as a light breeze blew through the leaves and ruffled her clothes.  
  
He closed his eyes against the sight, listened as she stepped, _one, two, a twig (amateur), another twig (_ — _maybe amusement instead), five…  
  
_ Instead of the sound of her removing more layers, or the splash of her wading in fully clothed, he heard a shifting of rocks; when he opened his eyes, she’d perched on the rocks by the waterfall, and he watched her foot as she dipped it into the spray and tilted her head back into the sun.  
  
He crossed his arms.  
  
She opened her eyes, her foot still under the water, and dropped her elbow to her knee and her chin to her palm, studying him. Her eyes were still darker than a moonless night and something in them still called to him— _still_ , after all these years, called to him like a trail begging to be uncovered, a challenge and a promise, endless and all-encompassing. He swallowed, though he didn’t blink, and the corner of her lips quirked upwards and slowly—letting him watch the path her fingers made through the sunlight as it wove itself into her hair, drawing him to remember the feel of it in his hands—she reached up, plucked the pins from her hair, and shook it loose.  
  
 _Not_ , he thought, in the moments that he could think, _fair_.  
  
Especially when she shook it twice more for good measure, then gathered it behind her ear and over one shoulder. She looked down at her toes, still playing in the water, and just when he thought it might be safe she flashed her gaze at him again, lips just parted, just barely smiling.  
  
“Depends,” she said again, and if his lips were parted too and his breath coming too quickly, well, to hell with it. “You coming too?”  
  
And then in one smooth motion she stood, discarded the rest of her clothing, and slipped into the water.  
  
She surfaced while he was still wrestling a buckle that had never troubled him before and he heard her laughing and the sound drowned out the birdsong and the snuffling and the wind and the leaves and he was going to _break this buckle_ and when it came undone he gave in and looked up, look at her head bobbing above the surface, the sun glittering off her wet hair and shining in her laughing eyes and _damn_ , he’d follow her anywhere.  
  
“Sure,” he said casually, unlacing his boots, dangling his own socks in the air until she wrinkled her nose. “You’ve taken me worse places.”  
  
She laughed again and he grinned and her laugh turned into a sigh of contentment, tilting her head as she looked at him and he looked at her and this was—  
  
Good.  
  
Good, but it’d be better once he was _out of this armor_ , and she laughed again but he heard the impatience in it as he finally stripped down to his trousers and then out of them, at which point he made his way to the edge of the water and looked down at her as she looked up at him, treading water, her eyes full of an anticipation bred from familiarity, and that was—good, too.  
  
“Come on in,” she said, slowly treading away from him, “the water’s fine.”  
  
He grinned, stuck in a foot for show, and then jumped in with as big a splash as he could muster, surfacing to find her sputtering and wiping water from her eyes.  
  
“Eh,” he said, reaching for her hand and pulling it away from her face, ignoring her indignant expression, pulling her through the water towards him, “it’s not bad.”  
  
And it wasn’t bad. Not in the slightest.


End file.
